Panfilov Park

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  • Address
    btwn Gogol and Qazybek Bi, city centre

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Lonely Planet review

Located between Gogol and Qazybek Bi, this large and popular rectangle of greenery, first laid out in the 1870s, is focused on the candy-coloured Zenkov Cathedral, Almaty's nearest (albeit distant) rival to St Basil's Cathedral. Designed by AP Zenkov in 1904, the cathedral is one of Almaty's few surviving tsarist-era buildings (most of the others were destroyed in the 1911 earthquake). Although at first glance it doesn't look like it, the cathedral is built entirely of wood (including the nails).

Used as a museum and concert hall in the Soviet era, then boarded up, it was returned to the Russian Orthodox Church in 1995 and has been restored as a functioning place of worship, with colourful icons and murals. Services are held at and Monday to Saturday, and , and Sunday. The park is named for the Panfilov Heroes, commemorated at the fearsome war memorial east of the cathedral. This represents the 28 soldiers of an Almaty infantry unit who died fighting off Nazi tanks in a village outside Moscow in 1941. An eternal flame commemorating the fallen of 1917-20 (the Civil War) and 1941-45 (WWII), flickers in front of the giant black monument of soldiers from all 15 Soviet republics bursting out of a map of the USSR. The park is on the routes of trolleybus Nos 1, 11 and 12, tram Nos 4 and 6, and bus Nos 63 and 94, among others.